The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 150

CURTIUS, GEORG, German philologist, born at Lubeck, brother of the preceding; held professorial appointments in Prague, Kiel, and Berlin; one of the best Greek scholars in Germany, and contributed largely to the etymology and grammar of the Greek language (1820-1885).

CURTIUS, QUINTUS RUFUS, a Roman historian of uncertain date; wrote a history of Alexander the Great in ten books, two of which have been lost, the rest surviving in a very fragmentary state.

CURTMANTLE, a surname of Henry II., from a robe he wore shorter than that of his predecessors.

CURULE CHAIR, a kind of ivory camp-stool, mounted on a chariot, on which a Roman magistrate, if consul, praetor, censor, or chief edile, sat as he was conveyed in state to the senate-house or some public function.

CURWEN, JOHN, an Independent clergyman, born in Yorks.h.i.+re; the founder of the Tonic Sol-fa system in music; from 1864 gave himself up to the advocacy and advancement of his system (1816-1880).

CURZON, GEORGE NATHANIEL, LORD, English statesman, son of a clergyman, educated at Eton and Oxford; became Fellow of All Souls; became Under-Secretary for India in 1891; travelled in the East, and wrote on Eastern topics, on which he became an authority; was appointed Viceroy of India in 1899; _b_. 1859.

CUs.h.i.+NG, an American jurist and diplomatist (1800-1879).

CUSHMAN, CHARLOTTE, an American actress, born in Boston; represented, among other characters, Lady Macbeth, Rosalind, Meg Merilees, and Romeo (1810-1876).

CUSTINE, COUNT DE, a French general, born at Metz; seized and occupied Mayence, 1792; was forced out of it by the Prussians and obliged to retreat; was called to account and sent to the guillotine; "unsuccessfulness," his crime; "had fought in America; was a proud, brave man, and his fortune led him _hither_" (1746-1793)

CuSTRIN, a strong little town, 68 or 70 m. E. of Berlin, where young Frederick the Great was kept in close confinement by his father.

CUTCH, a native State in the Bombay Presidency, in the country called Gujarat.

CUTCH, RANN OF, a salt-water mora.s.s between Gujarat and Scinde, which becomes a lake during the SW. monsoon.

CUTHBERT, a monk of Jarrow, a disciple of Bede; was with him when he died, and wrote in a letter a graphic and touching account of his death.

CUTHBERT, ST., born in Northumbria; originally a shepherd; saw a vision in the night-watches of the soul of St. Aidan ascending to heaven, which determined his destiny, and he became a monk; entered the monastery of Melrose, and eventually became prior, but devoted most of his time to mission-work in the surrounding districts; left Melrose to be prior of Lindisfarne, but longing for an austerer life, he retired to, and led the life of a hermit on, an island by himself; being persuaded to come back, he acted as bishop of Lindisfarne, and continued to act as such for two years, but his previous longings for solitude returned, and he went back to a hermit life, to spend a short season, as it happened, in prayer and meditation; when he died; what he did, and the memory of what he did, left an imperishable impression for good in the whole N. of England and the Scottish borders; his remains were conveyed to Lindisfarne, and ere long to Durham (635-687).

CUTTACK (47), capital of a district in S. of Bengal, at the apex of the delta formed by the Mahanuddy; noted for its gold and silver filigree work.

CUVIER, GEORGES, a celebrated naturalist, born at Montebeliard, of Huguenot ancestry; the creator of comparative anatomy and palaeontology; was educated at Stuttgart, where he studied natural science; but the observation of marine animals on the coast of Normandy, where he held a tutors.h.i.+p, first led him to the systematic study of anatomy, and brought him into correspondence with Geoffroy St. Hilaire and others, who invited him to Paris, where he prosecuted his investigations, matured his views, and became professor of Comparative Anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes, a member of the French Inst.i.tute, and Permanent Secretary of the Academy of Sciences, and eventually a peer of France; his labours in the science to which he devoted his life were immense, but he continued to the last a determined opponent of the theory, then being broached and now in vogue, of a common descent (1769-1832).

CUXHAVEN, a German watering-place at the mouth of the Elbe, on the southern bank.

CUYP, ALBERT, a celebrated Dutch landscape-painter, son of Jacob Cuyp, commonly called Old Cuyp, also a landscapist, born at Dort; painted scenes from the banks of the Meuse and the Rhine; is now reckoned a rival of Claude, though he was not so in his lifetime, his pictures selling now for a high price; he has been praised for his sunlights, but these, along with Claude's, have been p.r.o.nounced depreciatively by Ruskin as "colourless" (1605-1691).

CUZCO (20), a town in Peru, about 11,440 ft. above the sea-level, the ancient capital of the Incas; still retains traces of its former extent and greatness, the inhabitants reckoned as then numbering 200,000, and the civilisation advanced.

CYBELE, a nature-G.o.ddess wors.h.i.+pped in Phrygia and W. Asia, whose wors.h.i.+p, like that of the nature divinities generally, was accompanied with noisy, more or less licentious, revelry; identified by the Greeks with RHEA (q. v.), their nature-G.o.ddess.

CYCLADES, islands belonging to Greece, on the East or the aegean Sea, so called as forming a circle round Delos, the most famous of the group.

CYCLIC POETS, poets who after Homer's death caught the contagion of his great poem and wrote continuations, additions, &c.

CYCLOPEAN WALLS, a name given to structures found in Greece, Asia Minor, Italy, and Sicily, built of large ma.s.ses of unhewn stone and without cement, such as it is presumed a race of gigantic strength like the Cyclops (3) must have reared.

CYCLOPS, a name given to three distinct cla.s.ses of mythological beings: (1) a set of one-eyed savage giants infesting the coasts of Sicily and preying upon human flesh; (2) a set of t.i.tans, also one-eyed, belonging to the race of the G.o.ds, three in number, viz., Brontes, Steropes, and Arges--three great elemental powers of nature, subjected by and subject to Zeus; and (3) a people of Thrace, famed for their skill in building.

CYMBELINE, a legendary British king, and the hero of Shakespeare's romance play of the name.

CYNaeGIRUS, a brother of aeschylus; distinguished himself at Marathon; is famed for his desperate attempt to seize a retreating s.h.i.+p.

CYNEWULF, a Saxon poet, flourished at the second half of the 8th century; seems to have pa.s.sed through two phases, first as a glad-hearted child of nature, and then as a devout believer in Christ; at the former stage wrote "Riddles" and "Ode to the West Wind," at the latter his themes were the lives of Christ and certain Saints.

CYNICS, a sect of Greek philosophers, disciples of Antisthenes, who was a disciple of Socrates, but carried away with him only part of Socrates' teaching and enforced that as if it were the whole, dropped all regard for humanity and the universal reason, and taught that "virtue lay wholly in the avoidance of evil, and those desires and greeds that bind us to enjoyments," so that his disciples were called the "Capuchins of the Old World." These in time went further than their master, and conceived a contempt for everything that was not self-derived; they derived their name from the gymnasium in Athens, where their master taught.

CYPRIAN, ST., one of the Fathers of the Church, born at Carthage, about the year 200, converted to Christianity in 245; devoted himself thereafter to the study of the Bible, with the help of Tertullian his favourite author; became bishop of Carthage in 248; on the outbreak of the Decian persecution had to flee for his life, ministering to his flock the while by subst.i.tutes; on his return, after two years, he was involved in the discussion about the reception of the lapsed; under the Valerian persecution was banished; being recalled, he refused to sacrifice to the G.o.ds, and suffered martyrdom in 258; he was a zealous bishop of the High Church type, and the father of such, only on broader lines. Festival, Sept. 16.

CYPRUS (21), a fertile, mountainous island in the Levant, capital Nicosia (12); geographically connected with Asia, and the third largest in the Mediterranean, being 140 m. long and 60 m. broad; government ceded to Great Britain in 1878 by the Sultan, on condition of an annual tribute; is a British colony under a colonial governor or High Commissioner; is of considerable strategic importance to Britain; yields cereals, wines, cotton, &c., and has 400 m. of good road, and a large transit trade.

CYRENAICS, a sect of Greek philosophers, disciples of Aristippus, who was a disciple of Socrates, but who broke away from his master by divorcing virtue from happiness, and making "pleasure, moderated by reason, the ultimate aim of life, and the supreme good."

CYRE'NE, a town and Greek colony in Africa, E. of Egypt, extensive ruins of which still exist, and which was the capital of the State, called Cyrenaica after it, and the birthland of several ill.u.s.trious Greeks.

CYRIL, ST., surnamed the PHILOSOPHER, along with his brother Methodius, the "Apostle of the Slavs," born in Thessalonica; invented the Slavonic alphabet, and, with his brother's help, translated the Bible into the language of the Slavs; _d_. 868. Festival, March 9.

CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA, ST., born at Alexandria, and bishop there; an ecclesiastic of a violent, militant order; persecuted the Novatians, expelled the Jews from Alexandria, quarrelled with the governor, excited a fanaticism which led to the seizure and shameful murder of Hypatia; had a lifelong controversy with Nestorius, and got him condemned by the Council of Ephesus, while he himself was condemned by the Council at Antioch (608), and both cast into prison; after release lived at peace (376-444). Festival, Jan. 28.